Gina Stewart, a 49-year old grandmother, changed her gender in her Instagram profile settings in order to get out of a permanent ban over her revealing photos.
According to Stewart, she repeatedly got “shadow banned,” which means she retained her account but it did not show up in search results, to the point that her account was no longer visited. She claims her photos were continually deleted over violations of community guidelines, despite suggesting that she never uploaded nude pics.
“Instagram had been censoring my content so much it basically rendered my account stagnant – thanks to shadow bans and search bans, I call myself ‘the most banned celeb on Instagram,” she says, according to The Sun. “My photos are glamorous and sexy but not sexual, and tame compared to a lot of what you see there.”
In a desperate attempt to get out from under Instagram algorithmic heel, Stewart changed her gender in the account profile settings to male – and, miraculously, the algorithms left her alone.
“Since changing my sex, funnily enough my page seems to be no longer restricted and my account is building again,” she says. “I’ve had 10,000 new followers in just one month and haven’t had a single ban after 10 months of straight bans and deleted posts.”
Her frustration led Stewart to believe that Instagram algorithms target women and ignore men.
"It’s as if the algorithm has left me alone - by identifying as male it meant the Instagram algorithms saw that and went around me to the next woman,” she complained. “This unfortunately shows men are more accepted by Instagram.”
Facebook, which owns Instagram, has denied that the moderation algorithms used by the photo sharing website take gender into account.
"We want to make sure the content we recommend to people on Instagram is safe and appropriate for everyone. Ensuring people feel heard is an essential part of that effort,” a company spokesperson said. "Gender information from profiles has no impact on content we filter from hashtags or the Explore page."